 A. UNIQUENESS - INVESTOR CONFIDENCE IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY IS HIGH

Business Week - April 18, 2007
[Sam Stovall “A Positive Prognosis for Pharmaceuticals”, http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/apr2007/pi20070418_482504_page_2.htm] 

Despite near-term uncertainties over pricing and patent expirations, S&P thinks pharmaceuticals remains one of the healthiest and widest-margin U.S. industries. Saftlas sees longer-term prospects being enhanced by demographic growth in the elderly (which account for about 33% of industry sales) and by new therapeutic products from discoveries in genomics and biotechnology. In S&P's view, merger cost savings and synergies should also bolster profits at many companies. 
Saftlas sees prospects for the generic/specialty pharmaceutical segment remaining favorable. S&P sees a large number of blockbuster drugs losing patent protection over the next few years providing significant opportunities for this sector. The new Medicare drug plan will be especially beneficial to generic firms, in S&P's view. Saftlas favors companies with rich generic pipelines, especially those with first-to-file generics with the potential for 180 days of marketing exclusivity, and competence in litigating complex patent issues. 
So there you have it. The group's longer-term momentum leadership is rising, and S&P believes its fundamentals are intact, implying that these stocks have further to rise. 



B. LINK - POLICIES EFFECTING R&D PROFITS WILL BE PERCEIVED AS HURTING PHARMACEUTICALS KILLING INVESTOR CONFIDENCE

Glassman, Commisioner of US Securities and Exchange Commission, September 3, 2003
[Cynthia A., "Obstacles to Good Financial Reporting", http://aei.org/publications/pubID.19116,filter.all/pub_detail.asp] 

C. Analysis of Information in the Marketplace
After a company reports its information, the next stop along the road involves the market digesting that information. Analysts on both the buy- and sell-side play an important role in interpreting and disseminating information, and acting in effect as translators.
In considering ways to enhance financial reporting, we need to take into account the ability of investors and analysts to digest complicated information. It appears that investors as a group are not confused, at least over the long-term, by accounting choices that affect reported GAAP earnings, but not the real health of the company. For example, they are able to work their way through such issues as straight-line versus accelerated depreciation; purchase versus pooling accounting; expensing versus capitalizing R&D costs; and recognition versus deferral of unrealized gains on marketable securities.

 
Business Confidence Disadvantage 1NC Shell

C. IMPACT - COLLAPSE IN BUSINESS CONFIDENCE CAUSES ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

Braithwaite, Australian Research Council Federation Fellow, 2004
[John, The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science, March, “Emancipation and Hope”]

The challenge of designing institutions that simultaneously engender emancipation and hope is addressed within the assumption of economic institutions that are fundamentally capitalist. This contemporary global context gives more force to the hope nexus because we know capitalism thrives on hope. When business confidence collapses, capitalist economies head for recession. This dependence on hope is of quite general import; business leaders must have hope for the future before they will build new factories; consumers need confidence before they will buy what the factories make; investors need confidence before they will buy shares in the company that builds the factory; bankers need confidence to lend money to build the factory; scientists need confidence to innovate with new technologies in the hope that a capitalist will come along and market their invention. Keynes's ([1936]1981) General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money lamented the theoretical neglect of "animal spirits" of hope ("spontaneous optimism rather than . . . mathematical expectation" (p. 161) in the discipline of economics, a neglect that continues to this day (see also Barbalet 1993).


AND, ECONOMIC DOWNTURNS CAUSE NUCLEAR WAR

Mead, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, 1992 
(Walter Russell, New Perspectives Quarterly, Summer)

What if the global economy stagnates - or even shrinks?  In that case, we will face a new period of international conflict: South against North, rich against poor, Russia, China, India - those countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much greater danger to world order than Germany and Japan did in the 1930's.




 
